Helping Hand
by sein Henker
Summary: "That tiny little knife should have been less threatening in the fingers of a doctor than it would have been in the hands of torturer, but it wasn't. A cool "Now, this might hurt a bit..." from Owen as he got himself into position by Ianto's left shoulder made Ianto shiver in ways the best of the worst of the British military couldn't have."


Title: Helping Hand  
Summary: "That tiny little knife should have been less threatening in the fingers of a doctor than it would have been in the hands of torturer, but it wasn't. A cool "Now, this might hurt a bit..." from Owen as he got himself into position by Ianto's left shoulder made Ianto shiver in ways the best of the worst of the British military couldn't have."  
Rating: A for graphic sexual content and violence  
Word Count: 5,426  
Other Chapters: No.  
Disclaimer:The British Broadcasting Corporation owns Torchwood and all related characters, settings, and trademarks. I do not profit in any way from this material.

Pairings: Dr. Owen Harper/Ianto Jones (explicit, sexual); Captain Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones (chaste, romantic)  
Contains: Scarification; bondage; voyeurism; oral sex; anal sex; non-graphic masturbation; sex outside of an established relationship with the knowledge and consent of all involved  
Warnings: Violence in a consensual sexual context; ambiguous references to abuse

* * *

Ianto must have known it was coming. He wasn't supposed to know exactly when, but when Jack 'spontaneously' invited everyone to dinner and Owen quickly refused, it couldn't have been difficult to work out. Ianto had stayed calm as Jack, Tosh, and Gwen slipped out the door, smiling at them and telling them to have fun and that he was sorry he couldn't join them. He'd given some half-formed excuse that would hold up as long as Gwen let it go, and she seemed to. Getting it past Gwen was always the hard part, but Ianto knew he wasn't allowed to leave until he was given direct permission. It wasn't until they were gone that his smile fell and for just a few seconds he allowed himself to look nearly sick with fear. He regained his composure quickly, though. His breaths deepened and his face went blank. He didn't even jump when his headset went off.

"Tea-boy! I need you. Now."

Ianto kept his voice completely calm as he replied, as if he didn't know when he_definitely_ did... "Was that a request for tea, or just for my presence?"

"For you. _Now_. But if the tea is already made, you can bring that too."

Ianto flinched so slightly that it was really more of a twitch, but there was a look of self-depreciation or even _guilt_ on his face, as if he thought he really should have seen this coming and made tea five minutes ago. It might have made things slightly easier on him, or at least given him time to mentally ready himself a bit more. He stood up and moved quickly but without any real enthusiasm out of the information office and down to the autopsy room. Owen was waiting there. Whatever pretence of work he'd set up to avoid going out with the others was cleaned up now. There was only the cold, narrow table behind Owen, and for just a _moment_ Ianto hesitated and looked down as if his mind were willing but his legs were committing mutiny. Then it was over, and he went right down the last few steps and stopped deliberately at the bottom of the stairs, out of Owen's reach.

"_Here_, stupid tea-boy."

Ianto flinched, but took two strides forward and stepped right into Owen's backhand. Owen smiled. They were practically cuddling now. Owen took half a step back and slipped his finger's into Ianto's tie, loosening it just enough to tug the collar of Ianto's shirt out from under it, but leaving it on as he pushed Ianto's jacket off and then tore at Ianto's shirt, quickly undoing most of the buttons from the top down. "_Help_!" he said, glaring right into Ianto's eyes. Ianto began working on his buttons with shaky hands, moving from the bottom up at half the speed Owen was going down with. When Owen arrived at a button Ianto was already working on, much too slowly for Owen's taste, Owen pinched Ianto hard on the backs of his hands, right beneath the knuckles of both middle fingers, and quickly and painfully pulled Ianto's hands away. It was a fraction of what would come later, though. Ianto didn't even whimper. Owen undid the last button and yanked off the shirt, spinning Ianto around so that he could get it off Ianto's arms more easily. He dropped it, inside-out, and kicked it under the autopsy table with Ianto's jacket.

Ianto sighed and tensed slightly, and Owen reached over Ianto's shoulder and grabbed his tie. Owen's left hand went immediately to Ianto's back, warning Ianto not to turn around, and Owen's right hand turned the tie around. He pulled the tie tight against Ianto's throat, and then tighter still, until Ianto gave the smallest little cough.

"Don't start," Owen said. "I'm a doctor. You're fine." He slowly tugged the tie off to the side, and Ianto leaned into it calmly. "Kick your shoes off and get on the table."

There was no padding on the table, nor any covering of any sort; There was just cold, hard metal that made Ianto shiver the first time his naked back made contact with it. Owen kept his grip on the tie, allowing Ianto to lead but holding the material taunt so that Ianto wouldn't forget that his freedom was both conditional and temporary. Ianto couldn't quite settle back, though, not yet. Owen tugged the knot of the tie around to the side of Ianto's neck, leaving an ugly red friction burn across the skin where he did so, but still not making Ianto do anything more than grit his teeth. Then Owen pulled the tie downwards, looped it through the hole in the table, and tied it off. A couple more good tugs on the tie and a few gentle nudges to Ianto's arms had Ianto relaxed on the table, with about half of his head unsupported over the edge of it. He must have been cold and tense and a bit uneasy, but this was a private bed at a Hilton compared to what he knew was coming.

Owen looked over at the table where he normally kept his medical supplies. He'd set it up for this. He'd laid out two pairs of handcuffs, a scalpel, a clean cloth to wipe away the blood if and when it got to be too much for Owen to see what he was doing, a bowl of undiluted salt, and two bike water bottles that had been filled with two different liquids. It was all perfectly sterile and largely harmless, but it was everything that every child feared about visiting the doctor on one tray. Still, Owen could have been crueller than he was. Ianto strained for a good look at Owen's tools, but he couldn't lift his head more than a few centimetres, and that barely gave him a view over the edge of the autopsy table. Owen smiled slightly and picked up one of the cuffs to show him. Ianto relaxed and lowered his head back onto the table. He looked a bit confused and strangely disappointed. No doubt he'd been wondering what was in the bowl.

"Hands and elbows over the sides of the table."

And then a light came on behind Ianto's eyes. "Oh," he said. His voice cracked a bit, and it was clear from the look on his face that he _wanted_ to beg for gentler restraints, but he didn't. He was stronger than that, or perhaps just more stubborn. He obeyed and wiggled a bit to get as comfortable as possible on the table.

"Leave them there, and I won't cuff you until after we've got your trousers off."

Ianto nodded and brought his hands up to grip the bottom of the table while Owen moved to Ianto's waist. He undid Ianto's belt and trousers, and without waiting to be asked, Ianto bucked and held the position so that Owen could pull his trousers and pants down to Ianto's knees, then completely off, leaving Ianto in nothing but his socks.

"Good boy," Owen said. If the praise put Ianto at east at all, he didn't show it. Why should it put him at ease, though? All it meant was that, for now, Ianto had avoided punishment. It didn't mean things were going to be at all easier. Owen picked the handcuffs up off the other table, and Ianto sighed as he let go of the edge of the bottom of the autopsy table, letting his hands dangle.

Owen ducked beneath the autopsy table and snapped one cuff of each pair onto Ianto's wrists, then he locked the empty cuff of one pair into the loosest lock possible and _slowly_ started to bring to two empty cuffs together underneath the table. Ianto drew in another slow, deep breath. He couldn't seem to decide whether having his eyes open or shut was better. He closed them briefly, but only for a few seconds. He couldn't see what Owen as doing, regardless, but the building stress in his shoulders and collarbone must have been a good clue. Owen had the empty cuffs within centimetres of each other, but he was straining a little bit to get them together.

He could have gotten a third pair. They _had_ more handcuffs than they would ever have use for, stored away in various supply closets, and three would have held Ianto decently enough. He could even keep it tight if only used one cuff of the third pair. That wouldn't have hurt, though, so that would have spoiled half the fun. Owen forced it. Ianto gasped, and the gasp staggered and turned into a whine as he exhaled. Owen got the cuffs locked together, and Ianto laid there with tension building in his shoulders, neck, and collarbone. He moaned quietly, but it was a sound more suited to a child who wasn't getting his way than a grown man in true distress.

"Stop whining!" Owen said, standing up. "Or I'll give you something to whine about."

Ianto went too still and his breathing immediately became too even. He closed his mouth and stared straight up at the ceiling with a poker-face. Owen didn't appear to notice. After all, silence was what he'd asked for, and when he popped back up from under the table, he looked at his tray of tools, not at Ianto. It wasn't just compliance, though, not if the look on Ianto's face had anything to say about it. It was a learned reaction, and Ianto hadn't learned it from Jack or from Owen. Ianto moved his lips silently around the first two syllables of his safeword. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened his eyes again, and they were brighter now. His face twisted a bit with the stress and pain from his restraints, and that was significantly _better_ than that blank look. He was back, completely with Owen as Owen turned around with his scalpel raised, ready at last to really get to work.

He didn't hold the scalpel the way Jack would have. That tiny little knife should have been less threatening in the fingers of a doctor than it would have been in the hands of torturer, but it wasn't. A cool "Now, this might hurt a bit..." from Owen as he got himself into position by Ianto's left shoulder made Ianto shiver in ways the best of the worst of the British military couldn't have.

Owen raised an eyebrow and showed Ianto the blade. "Do I need to tell you that moving is not a good idea?"

Ianto shook his head.

There was no way for Ianto to watch as the blade went into his skin. He could see Owen's wrist and the long metal handle of the scalpel, but the actual cut was made quickly and smoothly right on his collar bone, out of Ianto's line of sight. Ianto gasped as the metal invaded him, but he looked up at Owen's face rather than fight a losing battle to see his first injury. Owen wouldn't meet his eyes. Owen was staring down at his work with a look of detached concentration, more like Ianto was a dead alien to be dissected than a cold and tense team mate at his mercy.

Owen pulled the blade toward Ianto's left shoulder as effortlessly as if he were cutting through water. The line was only a couple of centimetres long, so it had to be deep. Blood rushed up to fill the cavern in Ianto's skin and Ianto hissed slightly as the first good sting of the night came. Owen lifted the scalpel and placed the bled with surgical precision just beneath the centre of the first cut. He drew it straight down for several centimetres, then stopped and made four more smaller cuts, each only about a centimetre long but all of them wicked deep, varying angles, connected end to end. He had to pause for several seconds between each one, to allow Ianto to sob briefly and then steady himself again, so that he didn't break while Owen was in mid-cut and jerk his skin the wrong way beneath the knife. Owen's hands were steady, but the danger with cutting into fully conscious bodies was that the _bodies_weren't steady. Nothing in the human form or spirit much liked the idea of holding perfectly still while it was mutilated.

Owen grabbed the towel and dabbed away the blood until he could see exactly where the cuts were. Ianto hissed at the rough material and unrestrained pressure on his fresh wounds, but he didn't object to them. It looked good, except that his first two lines didn't quite meet when they should have. He rotated his scalpel and placed it just above the top of the second cut, then he met Ianto eyes. "Do. Not. Move," he said, stressing every word. "Not one _centimetre_. Hold your breath. This'll only take a second."

Ianto nodded and his chest went completely still. Owen very quickly made a light knick, cutting only the top layer of skin or so, through the first line. Then he went back and deepened the area where the two lines met, going down from the first line into the second line. "Breathe," he said, lifting the scalpel out of the wound.

"_Shit_! That fucking hurts!" Ianto said, trembling a bit as he released all the tension and pain he'd held in so very well a moment ago. "I hate you both."

"Oi! No Welsh!" Owen said as Ianto took several deep breaths and managed to still his shaking limbs and at least even out his breaths. "Unless it's that ridiculous safeword of yours."

"My safeword's not Welsh," Ianto said through panting that was slowly fading into normal breathing. "No idea what it is. It was Jack's idea. I think he suggested it as a joke and when I repeated it back to him correctly, it stuck."

"Could be just about anything in the universe, then." Owen dabbed the blood away again, just a bit more gently this time. He looked at the cuts for a minute and nodded. "It's a bit messy now, but the scars'll look right when they heal. Seriously, though, if you're going to mouth off, mouth off in English. There's nothing you could say about my mother that would offend me anyway."

Ianto thought about this for a moment and then grinned. "Owen?"

"Yeah?"

"Your mother was right."

Owen raised his eyebrows. "_That_ was completely uncalled for and incredibly stupid." He put his scalpel down and picked up one of the water bottles. "And _now_ you get to find out what's in the mystery water bottles..." He popped the top and smirked. "Now's as good a time as any."

"I feel as though this would have happened anyway," Ianto said calmly. "It's not motivating me to be very good."

"Not yet," Owen said. He tipped the water bottle upside down and let a steady trickle of liquid fall into the open wound for three seconds.

Ianto made a noise somewhere between a gasp and scream and _thrashed_ even though it must have been agony for his shoulders. It was probably the pain in his shoulders which made him settle down after only a moment, because a steady stream of "Fuck fuck fuck fuck..." continued coming out of his mouth. His right leg rose from the autopsy table and kicked backwards, not with any malice but with a great deal of power.

Owen glared first at Ianto's foot then into Ianto's face. "Do I need to tie your ankles down?!"

Ianto stopped swearing. He continued breathing hard, but he otherwise held still.

"Well?"

Ianto shook his head.

"_Speak_, tea-boy."

"No!" Ianto said. "I'm not going to hurt you _or_ your metal table. I promise."

"Right then," Owen said, closing the top of the bottle. He shook the bottle lightly. "This is the red water bottle. It's bad. It comes out to play only when _you_ are bad—"

"I'm not _five_, Owen."

Owen sighed. "This is an alcoholic and acidic _nightmare_ of an antiseptic. It won't hurt you—in fact it's disinfecting you—but as you've just noticed and are probably _still_noticing, it fucking _burns_, and it will burn just as much every time I use it. Make me mad, and I'll use it on you whenever I feel the need _and_ wash your cuts out with it when we're done. Behave, and when we're done we'll wash out your cuts with the_water_ in the green water bottle. All clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Good then. Moving on..." Owen put the water bottle down and picked up the scalpel. He placed it a centimetre or two closer to Ianto's shoulder than the end of the first line, and then he cut parallel to the second line and about as far down. A third line, perfectly parallel to and even with the second, came down immediately afterwards. Then Owen made a _very_ shallow cut that crossed both of them at the centre. Ianto whimpered and grunted and his legs were wiggling in ridiculous ways, but he didn't kick again, even harmlessly into the air, and he remained still enough for Owen to do his work. Owen deepened the last cut between the two lines, then wiped away the blood with the cloth again.

"We're almost done with this part," Owen said.

"This is the easy part," Ianto said through grit teeth.

"Oh, come on," Owen said. "Next all you have to do is stay hard for me."

"Like I said, this is the easy part."

Owen calmly grabbed the red water bottle and poured the antiseptic over all of Ianto's wounds.

"_Jesus_!" Ianto bucked, and this time the pain in his shoulders didn't stop him from squirming. He tossed his feet over the sides of the table and hooked his ankles around the bottom, and then tugged on those self-created restraints so much that he might have actually been marginally more comfortable if he had let Owen tie his ankles. After a minute, he stopped his struggling and shifted his shoulders about as much as he could, though it couldn't have done much to relieve the ache in them.

"Stop provoking me," Owen said when Ianto appeared to be at least _capable_ of listening. "I have two last little points to get, and I'm going to need you to hold your breath for me again."

Ianto nodded. "Give me a minute."

"No," Owen said, immediately moving into position and holding the scalpel just over the cut. "This is the easy part, so work harder for me."

For the tiniest second there was a glint in Ianto's eyes as though he were considering stopping everything, or at least _demanding_ the minute to catch his breath first. He didn't, though. He took one deep breath and held it, and Owen did what he needed to do quickly. He pulled the bloody knife tip out, and Ianto let the breath out as a whine.

"All done!" Owen said cheerily. He rubbed off the blood, smearing a good amount of it all over the uninjured parts of Ianto's collarbone and throat, but making the deep crimson gashes clearly visible against pink but unharmed skin, and offering a perfect view of the marks to the security camera. He then tossed the bloody towel and the scalpel back onto the supply table.

"Now..." Owen said, walking toward Ianto's feet. He slapped Ianto's inner thigh lightly, but Ianto's chest was heaving and he barely seemed aware that Owen was still there. "How nice should I be to you?" He jacked Ianto once, quickly, and _that_ got Ianto's attention.

Ianto looked at him for a moment, so calm he was almost bored. "I'm not going to beg you."

"Yes, you are," Owen said, equally calmly.

Ianto's eyes widened. It wasn't an _order_ that Ianto could be directly punished for disobeying, not yet, but Ianto knew a threat when he heard one. If Ianto held his ground, the next thing Owen said _would_ be an order, and Ianto would be punished for disobeying. There were three ways this could _realistically_ go down, and none of them left Ianto victorious in any sense. They were both _stubborn_ men, but only Ianto was bound and bleeding. He could stop the game, but he couldn't win, and he knew that. He thought about it _carefully_. Owen was giving him a painless second chance, and after he'd been flippant and whiny during the scarring process, that was more than he deserved.

He broke eye contact. He closed his eyes and took a slow breath, then opened them again and spoke with a slight tremor in his voice: "Owen..."

"Not in that tone," Owen said. Ianto flinched, but Owen's touch was perfectly gentle. He caressed the thigh he'd slapped earlier. There was blood on his fingers and a bit more on his wrist, probably from the towel rather than Ianto's flesh, but it had dried already. "When you're ready; We've got time."

Ianto tried to relax. Even from the security camera's angle, it was obvious that he was_trying_ to relax his chest muscles despite his unforgiving binding, and he took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes for just a second, then opened them again with a bright look that Jack knew _very_ well. "Owen, please touch me," he said, without a trace of a tell anywhere in his face or voice. Ianto really was a frighteningly good liar. He was losing his cool now, definitely, but that was at least partially intentional. Owen was getting off on Ianto's pain, and even though Ianto hadn't been at a good angle to see that since he got on the table, it must have been obvious. Owen would never have agreed to this if he didn't find his own end of the deal arousing."Fuck me, kiss me, do anything you want to me. I'm yours. Bound and at your mercy, and there is _nowhere_ I'd rather be. So please."

He could have done better, as a matter of objective fact, but that was good enough for Owen, if only because Owen didn't _know_ that Ianto could have done better. Owen wanked Ianto again, getting him properly hard before Owen leaned over the table and smoothly took Ianto's cock into his mouth. Ianto's eyes rolled back in his head and he moaned as Owen sucked and then slowly deep-throated him, too smoothly for Owen not to have done it many times before. Owen laid his left hand gently on Ianto's hip, reminding Ianto not to buck, but Ianto was smarter than that anyway. Owen _was_ going to fuck him, and he could make that a Hell of a lot worse on Ianto by binding Ianto's legs in certain very deliberately wrong ways. With his hands still cuffed in the most painful way Owen could manage, Ianto didn't need to be reminded of what was at stake.

Owen's eyes were devilish. Ianto knew better than to buck, but Owen was certainly making him writhe, both in pleasure and in pain from the cuts that were still slowly seeping blood than ran drop by drop in thin lines over to Ianto shoulder. None of the drops hit the floor. Not yet. They might start too soon, though, if Ianto kept wiggling like that while Owen's lips and tongue glided over his cock.

Ianto started to moan but channelled it into a whine instead, more like something Owen had cruelly torn from his throat than an expression of gratitude. His eyes refocused and he blinked hard a few times as he realized that Owen had always intended to push Ianto over the edge before taking his own pleasure. It was more humiliating. It kept Ianto's attention quite solidly on the behaviour of his own body and didn't allow Ianto any hope of ending things simply by getting Owen off. Owen wasn't going to move on until Ianto had _lost_ and thoroughly enjoyed the losing.

"Tell me," Owen said, stopping for a just a moment, "Or you will be in trouble."

Ianto took in and let out a staggered breath as Owen returned to sucking him off. "I'm going to come," he said, quickly and with a downward inflection on the end, as if he still believed he could change Owen's mind about this if he could just make Owen understand the true gravity of the situation.

Too late. Owen narrowly avoided making a mess of his face, though certainly not of the autopsy table, and smiled at Ianto and gently caressed his leg again, _daring_ him to say what he was thinking.

Ianto was silent. He was bloody, sticky, and smart enough not to move his leg, even though he still reflexively twitched at Owen's touch. Ianto laid still, panting, and tried to meet Owen's eyes because he knew there was a reason he'd been made to come so early and the odds that it was a good reason were horrifyingly low.

Owen grabbed the towel off the supply table and roughly cleaned up Ianto's blood and sperm before anything could drip to the floor. Ianto hissed as the rough material was rubbed against his open wounds, but he held still for Owen. When Ianto was passably clean, Owen pulled lube and a condom out of his pocket and sat them on the table near Ianto's legs. Then he undressed. Ianto waited. No snarky remarks. Not a twitch from his legs. The lube was right there, where he could have _kicked_ it off the autopsy table and onto the floor (Though naturally he didn't. It was the last thing he wanted to lose.) and that meant it wasn't in the bowl.

Once he was naked, Owen moved the supply tray closer to the table. Ianto strained to see over the top of the bowl while Owen put on the condom. Ianto couldn't see a fucking thing. Owen climbed up onto the table, and Ianto spread his legs to make more room for Owen, then Owen allowed Ianto to just toss his legs over Owen's shoulders. Owen lubed up the condom liberally. Because even though Ianto was about as much in the habit of being penetrated as Jack was at this point in their relationship, and he seemed about as relaxed as it was reasonable to expect him to be with the cuts on his collar bone still stinging, but he still whimpered just the tiniest bit when Owen trust into him, faster and rougher than Jack ever had or ever would have, but Ianto wasn't in any position to object. Owen pulled out and thrust in a few times, then paused as deep into Ianto as he could get and reached for the bowl on the supply try.

"Go ahead and close your eyes for a moment," Owen said.

Ianto raised his eyebrows and kept his eyes open for a moment on the extremely low chance that Owen was kidding, and Owen just tilted his head slightly, dangerously. Ianto decided to comply.

Owen may have been being cruel to be kind. Since Owen was _always_ cruel, that was about as close to straight kindness as it got. Ianto wouldn't have been able to brace himself for it, even if he'd seen the tiny white grains that Owen lifted out of the bowl. By closing his eyes, Owen was allowing him a moment of confusion and mild anxiety rather than unbridled terror.

Owen sprinkled the first pinch onto Ianto's cuts.

Ianto screamed. It echoed back through the base, but with Jack and the women out to dinner, the only response he got was an indignant screech from Myfawny. Owen tossed a few more pinches of salt onto the wound and then rutted Ianto mercilessly as Ianto whined and squirmed, but he was dangerously close to popping out a shoulder and he knew it, and with his legs of Owen's shoulders it was nearly impossible for him to get the leverage needed to buck. Tears formed in and fell from Ianto's eyes, and Owen seemed _encouraged_ by them, if he was affected by them at all. Owen found a quick, steady pace, and Ianto managed to channel all of his pain into quiet crying with frequent but not loud whimpers thrown in. He seemed, at this point, utterly resigned and indifferent to the way his body was being used.

Owen grunted and came hard into Ianto, then pulled out and looked at Ianto _almost_fondly as he picked up the green water bottle and used it to wash the salt out of Ianto's wounds. Ianto's breathing steadied, and he got very quiet and made a point of holding very still and being very good so that Owen would let him up soon, and Owen didn't disappoint.

"About those scars," Owen said, a touch louder than he needed to, as he climbed off the autopsy table. "Wash them in citrus juice to keep them open for a while. They'll heal..." He sucked his teeth and considered his word-choice. "Well, you'll be able to see the scars better, when you do finally let them close." He was looking directly at the security camera, though, not at Ianto.

Ianto seemed to understand that this comment, while about his body, was not directed at him. He moaned, but in the tone of someone who considered the bad news inevitable, not someone who'd just heard a rather unappealing suggestion.

"Stow it," Owen said, fishing the keys to the handcuffs out of one of his pockets. "It's not too late for me to break out that antiseptic one last time."

Ianto was quiet until the cuffs were undone, and then he quickly sat up and rolled his shoulders. "Now it is," he said.

"What did I tell you about the Welsh?"

Ianto hopped off the autopsy table without answering, and they both understood that meant the game was over.

There was a knock at the door, and Jack paused the video feed just as Owen and Ianto started to gather up their clothes. He'd have liked to see a few minutes of snarky homoerotic awkwardness between them, but why watch the video when he could have the real thing?

"Come in."

Ianto did, bare chested and with wet hair. He'd have showered, after disinfecting Owen's autopsy table. In fact, Jack was fairly certain he'd heard the water start a while back. Jack didn't mind at all. The bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped, and it was good to have Ianto clean. "Done yet?" Ianto asked.

"More or less," Jack said, and the mess on his hand and in his chair attested to it. He grabbed the box of tissues on his desk and started to clean himself up. He was completely naked, but Ianto was well beyond being bothered or surprised by that.

"Is that popcorn?!" Ianto asked, though his smile really ruined his outraged tone. He walked over to Jack's desk and lifted a handful from the bowl. "You were eating_popcorn_ whilst watching Owen scar me?" He popped the pieces into his mouth and glared at Jack half-heartedly.

"The entire _point_ was for me to enjoy watching you two—" He reached for the bowl, but Ianto snatched it away.

He clutched it to his chest and sat on Jack's desk, eating more of it. "Nope," he said. "It's mine now."

"It's not terribly logical, being okay with me jacking off but upset that I was _eating_..."

"I came for Owen. I haven't _eaten_ since lunch."

They both laughed. Jack stood up and moved closer to Ianto. Ianto held perfectly still and shut his eyes, and Jack gently ran his clean left index finger over the red lines enhancing Ianto's skin. "Am I hurting you?" Jack asked quietly.

Ianto swallowed hard. "A little," he said. "I will say, though, if you're nervous about_touching_ them like this, you're going to have a Hell of a time squirting lemon juice into them."

"Hm..." Jack said, looking at the marks carefully, "They should scar anyway. Maybe we don't need the lemon juice."

"Maybe," Ianto said, smiling.

"_Maybe_," Jack repeated. "We'll see how good you are between now and when those start to close." He dropped a quick kiss on the crock of Ianto's neck, then moved over and lower, and pressed his lips, with just a touch more pressure than he'd used with his fingers, to the bright "JH" that Owen had carved into Ianto's skin, marking him as Jack's forever.


End file.
